Where the World and I Collide

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Pre-Order for $10

Anyone can do this. All you have to do is wait 3 months and pre-order patch 1.2! You get the full game, bug-free.

Snark aside, it remarkable how tolerant we gamers have become to shady business practices. I’ve had my fair share of pre-orders in the past, though nowdays it seems everything has some sort of benefit tied into it. Gamestop has a bonus mission for AC:Origins. Mass Effect 3 had the playable Prothean as a pre-order. I have a rule now, that any game that gives me additional content (not cosmetics) is not going to see a dime on regular priced material. There are literally hundreds of other things I can play or do until some bargain bin sale comes around.

If you think about it, the only benefit pre-orders allow is that you can pre-download the game in order to play on day 1 (PC that is). Does that even matter on a single player game? I can sort of see multiplayer games, where you all want to play at the same time… but even then, the servers are likely going to get bombarded for the first few days.

I’ll give a recent example – For Honor. Tons of hype. The pre-launch videos were all smooth, and things looked engaging. Pre-order gave you some extra customization skins (at least the base game version, ignoring Gold/Deluxe crud). Then the early reviews came out. They were generally negative, in particular around network connections and game balance. Steam play has dropped by 95% now. It lost 70% in the first month.

There’s always the argument that mutliplayer games need to be played on day 1. Any multiplayer game that is half decent will not drop all players after a few weeks. Any well-balanced multiplayer game will not make it so that veteran players completely outrank new players in PvP. If you find a game where those statements are not true, then you’re playing a game you should not have paid for.

If anything, waiting 2 weeks will provide a better experience due to the “kitchen sink” patch that always comes out a few days after launch.

It’s just so much easier to put the money back into your wallet and wait a few more days. At least the game will be playable by the time you join.